The wolf of Chirk is a Cambrian, not a Gothic wolf, and though “a wolf of battle,” is the wolf not of Biddulph, but of Ryred.
CHAPTER LV
A Visitor—Apprenticeship to the Law—Croch Daranau Lope de Vega—No life like the Traveller’s.
One morning as I sat alone a gentleman was announced. On his entrance I recognised in him the magistrate’s clerk, owing to whose good word, as it appeared to me, I had been permitted to remain during the examination into the affair of the wounded butcher. He was a stout, strong-made man, somewhat under the middle height, with a ruddy face, and very clear, grey eyes. I handed him a chair, which he took, and said that his name was R—, and that he had taken the liberty of calling, as he had a great desire to be acquainted with me. On my asking him his reason for that desire, he told me that it proceeded from his having read a book of mine about Spain, which had much interested him.
“Good,” said I, “you can’t give an author a better reason for coming to see him than being pleased with his book. I assure you that you are most welcome.”
After a little general discourse, I said that I presumed he was in the law.
“Yes,” said he, “I am a member of that much-abused profession.”
“And unjustly abused,” said I; “it is a profession which abounds with honourable men, and in which I believe there are fewer scamps than in any other. The most honourable men I have ever known have been lawyers; they were men whose word was their bond, and who would have preferred ruin to breaking it. There was my old master, in particular, who would have died sooner than broken his word. God bless him! I think I see him now, with his bald, shining pate, and his finger on an open page of Preston’s Conveyancing.”
“Sure you are not a limb of the law?” said Mr. R—.
“No,” said I, “but I might be, for I served an apprenticeship to it.”